Page 62 - David Bermant Foundation

called him again. “Kid,” said DWB, “I don’t know if I’m helping you or hurting you.”“Dave was very generous,” Shuler would later say, “but he wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t over pay and I didn’t over charge. So, it worked out.”Money is always a factor but so is inspiration. DWB was not an artist, but he was inspired. So, he’d go to his artists and he’d lay out an idea. He’d listen to a proposal or look at a model or a sketch, and if he didn’t like it he was not afraid to say, “No.” But more important, he was also not afraid to say, “What else you got?” And it was that sprit of, “what else you got?” that ever moved him forward.“Listen kid,” DWB said to Shuler, “I’m doing this thing where I’ve got this twenty-foot tall pole, and I want sculptures on top of it that move with the wind or do something . . . What do you got?”A bit of back and forth and Shuler came up with the “Albatross.” Actually, “Albatrosses” because there were seven of them. Atop the twenty-foot pole floats a sculpture shaped like a sailplane. With a wingspan ofthirteen feet, it matches the great wandering albatrosses of the South Seas. Turning in the wind, the “Albatross” reflects the sun off its 24-karat gold skin.Five Albatrosses belonged to DWB; three were in shopping centers; one stands at the Santa Barbara Airport; one at DWB’s home. But perhaps more important than that support, from patron to artist, when Shuler sold “Albatross VI” to a museum in Wichita, Kansas, DWB was the first person he called. “I knew he would be happy,” said Shuler. And that was the key to the relationship. DWB wanted his artists to do well. “Because of him, I sold a major piece and it helped me a lot.”David Bermant called Dustin Shuler, “one of the great artists of my time.” And when DWB wondered if his no nonsense, straight forward methods were a help or a hindrance to the artist, Shuler replied, “You don’t owe me anything. You’ve allowed me to do some of my greatest work.”In May 2010, Dustin Shuler set aside his last piece of work, clearing his list of things to do. He passed away at the age of sixty-two.DUSTIN SHULER Albatross V199518”H x 156”W x 80”D (on 20’ pole)61